Conference - Body, religion and diversity
Salle de conférence, MISHA
Co-organised with DRES and the MISHA research programme (Dé)constructions du communautarisme religieux, by Lionel Obadia (USIAS Fellow 2014), as part of the USIAS project (Re)thinking religious in the plural.
In all sectors of contemporary European societies, the religious is re-emerging, both in very visible ways and in more subtle, hidden forms, at the micro-level of the individual and private space and at the the macro-level of law and institutions.
The body has been a long term important topic in anthropology, as an important site of expression of individual, social, economic, cultural and ideological developments. The body seems to have escaped the path of secularization; instead it is still and possibly increasingly functioning as a site for the expression of religious claims, and used for experiments with new forms of spirituality.
Religion-inspired bodily practices, be it controlling what enters the body (food, alcohol), using the body as a site of expression, directly (tattoos, scarification, circumcision, etc), of via clothing (headscarf, kippa, crucifix, etc), decisions about what can be done to a body (medicine, surgery, genetic manipulation, euthanasia, etc) or rules of sexuality, all religions formulate rules, bans, taboos, recommendations and requirements. In addition, individual actors reinvent the religious by spiritual forms and practices, which they express through their bodily practices.
Studying the religious through the body has already given rise to wide and varied research. However, the study of the body in relation to religious discourse has long remained the preserve of specialists of Antiquity, the Middle Ages and other parts of historical inquiry. Little has been done in the area of perspectives and practices regarding the body in contemporary religious discourse.
The religious discourse on the body is an important body of literature, but far from homogeneous: it obviously differs between religions, but also varies within the same religion, by place or time. Thus, our time values the well-being, self-care, care: how to understand this in the context of Christian interest in mortification? What part of religion may give incentives for practices to "detoxify" or "purify"? How does the ideology of health manifest itself in the discourse of certain religious groups on smoking, or homosexuality? Are these trends showing the development of new standards of thought and action, inspired by features of religions? Or how, conversely, are religions impacted by new cultural trends and new ideologies of self and care, how do these affect the ideological and legal frameworks of religions?
These are just some examples illustrating the theme of this symposium, which focuses on contemporary developments in the religious discourse on the body.
For more information, please contact Lionel Obadia, lobadia [at] unistra.fr
